Podcast Alert: Mike Haynes
Mike Haynes is an NFL Hall of Fame cornerback who played 14 years in the league with the Patriots and Raiders. He is a businessman, a cancer survivor, and an advocate for increased research on concussion safety.
AJ and Mike discuss the early days of his football career, diversity in sports, the transition from player to executive, and why Mike is set on living to 125-years-old.
Transcript
+^[00:00:00] Mike Haynes: This is how naive I was, AJ, I said, the person who spends his last dollar as he takes his last breath, that’s doing it right. And I really, honest to God believe that. And then later I realized, It would’ve been better if I had been thinking, make a lot of money and leave it to my kids and my grandkids so that they don’t have to play football to have a great life.
AJ: Hello and welcome to the Navigating Sports Business Podcast. I’m your host, AJ Maestas, founder of Navigate a data-driven consulting firm, guiding major strategies and decisions in sports and entertainment. We started this podcast hoping to share the interesting stories and experiences of the amazing people we get [00:01:00] to work with at Navigate.
And even though they’re visionaries and famous, in many instances, their true stories aren’t often heard. Since they’re not on the playing field, our hope is you get to know them better and learn from them as we have.
This week I’m happy to be joined by Mike Haynes, Hall of Fame, cornerback and founder of Mike Haynes and Associates. How you doing today, Mike?
Mike Haynes: I’m doing good. How are you, AJ?
AJ: Good. I’m very good feeling very lucky, healthy and happy and all that kind of stuff. So it’s been a long time since we were together in person.
It was back when I was working on your charity golf tournament back at ASU don’t even know if you really remember that very well. But you still involved with ASU? You’re still giving and contributing?
Mike Haynes: Well, still contributing to scholarship in the business school. But not like I was, I don’t have the golf tournament anymore.
That that was a lot of fun though.
AJ: It was, it was. I was lucky to be a [00:02:00] part of it and good for you. It says a lot in my mind for those who take time to get back clearing the path, you know that they once walked. Well, I can’t resist sharing some highlights from your resume, just so our listeners get to know you a little bit better before we begin.
So after obviously a standout high school career in Los Angeles, you started at ASU cornerback before being drafted as the fifth overall pick in the 1976 N F L draft, you went on to stand out in the N F L over your 14 year career as a cornerback and punt returner, playing seven years respectively for each the Patriots.
And the Raiders winning Super Bowl 18 with the Raiders in 1983. You’re a nine time pro bowler. That’s awesome. That’s just amazing. And including your rookie year and you’re inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1997 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000. That’s a lot. That’s pretty cool.
I hope you feel proud when you hear that.
Mike Haynes: I didn’t do it by myself. All those great things were on a team and I was very [00:03:00] fortunate to go to ASU and play with so many great athletes. A lot of ’em were top draft choices into the N F L and then to go into the N F L and play with a lot of great guys on both the Patriots and the Raiders.
So I’m blessed and you can’t be a good defensive back unless you have a good pass rush. So, you know, if the quarterback has all day, I don’t care what kind of athletic ability you have, you’re gonna get beat and it’s gonna be a tough year. And really funny quick story. I played on the number one secondary in the N F L while on the Patriots.
And everybody thinks, wow, those guys must have been good. No, we weren’t that good. But our defensive line was horrible. I’m not gonna mention any names because those guys would kill me, but it could be third and 18. And instead of passing, the team would run for it and get first. So you really have to follow the game to having a real appreciation for what people are doing.
But as a player, if [00:04:00] everything on team works hand in hand, and as great as the defenses were that I played on, we wouldn’t have been a great team unless everybody on the team performed at a super high level.
AJ: I love that actually, you’ve taught me something today, right? Because I think most people realize a great pass rush can make the defensive backfield look good, but I never thought about the fact that you can also look good by having terrible run defense no one ever throws.
Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. Do you mind taking me back to how you chose ASU?
Mike Haynes: I was working at Fredericks of Hollywood. I don’t know if you know anything about that .
AJ: Of course, yes.
Mike Haynes: One of my bosses, the guy who my, was my immediate boss, he said to me, he goes, what are you doing here? I go, what do you mean?
He goes, you told me that you played this All-Star game and you had this great career, and weren’t any of those colleges interested in you? And I said, yes, sir. I said, Arizona State was interested. And he goes, well, you should give ’em a call and see if they’re still interested. So I called and they I said, are [00:05:00] you guys still interested?
They said, have you taken the boards yet? I said, no, sir, I haven’t. He says, take the boards. So after I took the boards, I was able to get into ASU. So I ended up sitting outta high school one year and I got lucky the year that I started, they had changed the rule where freshmans could play on the varsity.
So I was able to play on the varsity as a freshman instead of, so I didn’t really waste a year. Now I didn’t even realize until just now, like everything happens for a reason. And I was really fortunate and blessed to have that. Asu, the coach there was Al Loganville who’s still now there working with Herm helping with recruiting.
He’s a great coach and a great human being. And I love that guy and, really glad to have played for him. He gave me my start. I think he thought he was gonna lose his job. So he said, if I’m gonna lose my job, I’m gonna go out the way I wanna go out. Imma put him in, and so he put me in, even though I was a freshman and I didn’t let him down I started three games on the varsity, including the Fiesta Ball my freshman year.
AJ: [00:06:00] Wow, that’s amazing. And I love it that he’s still in athletics there. What do you think of the work that Herm is doing there as the head coach?
Mike Haynes: I know him personally. I think he’s doing a fantastic job. I’ll never forget I went over the very first day that they had practiced and watched him practice and congratulated Herm and was thankful for him being there.
In my mind, they kinda run it like an N F L team where you have a general manager type structure, you have a scouting structure and I’m really proud of the way they’re running the program and I’m thinking it’s gonna help with their recruiting and it’s just a matter of time before they really become a powerhouse team because it’s a great place to go to school. They have everything they need and there’s tons of athletes within a 300 mile radius of the Phoenix area.
AJ: The population here, I live down here in Scottsdale. If you look at the high school programs here, the population growth the weather, there’s no reason. There’s no reason. Yeah. If they don’t build a powerhouse, Title IX is 50 years old. So for 50 years, as many women have been scholarship [00:07:00] athletes as men, I think you know the numbers roughly, but about 50% of football players are African American. About 60% of N B A players, as an example, are African American.
I won’t make you guess, but the numbers as far as athletic directors, he unfortunately is the exception, not the rule.
Mike Haynes: Yeah. And Hopefully that will change. We’re starting to see change, but it’s not instant change. And I think it, it has, it, it evolves and it, and I think that’s a, I’m okay with that as long as.
Things are, moving in that direction. I wish it changed faster. A lot of times for me as being an African American. I really looked at the team. I picked a team based on the number of African Americans they had, like, you know, the Raiders. They had so many African Americans and college Oklahoma had a whole bunch.
Guess who else did? Arizona State did all right. So, uh, Ohio State did a lot of these schools. They did, and the, and then as soon as they opened it up, the game became more exciting and there were more African [00:08:00] Americans playing at these schools and in the N F L. But I don’t all always believe that the guys were being treated fairly in those schools.
Like, you know, were they just being used? They go there and the team would win. The school would win. Uh, and so they get more money to play in bowls. They get more sponsorship dollars and, and things like that. And more the alumni are more proud of their school and they’re donating more dollars to different events and things that are happening.
But are those guys when their careers are over, because as you know, only a small percentage of those guys are gonna make in the nfl. Is the school gonna still help ’em out? Is it gonna help them find a good job? I was watching a movie of Jesse Owens. I don’t know if you remember who he is, but he was a sprinter and I think he performed in like the 1936 Olympics or in that time area.
AJ: That’s correct. Yep. And in Berlin. Berlin, Germany. Yeah, exactly. Germany his life.
Mike Haynes: His career was just unbelievable. How he won and the things that he had to put up with. [00:09:00] And then even after winning four gold medals, when he came back, the best job he could get was like a janitor’s job. You know? I was like, wow.
And then people say, oh, we’re so proud of you, Jesse. And like, yeah, right. You know, how about giving me a loan and helping me get a business here that I could start and do something positive? I think a lot of that mentality that was in the world then is still here. And I would love to see, at least my alma mater, understand that it’s not an even playing field.
It’s not, and everybody likes to think it is. But it’s not, and it’s not even close in terms of having role models. And you know when, and so for a football player, for an African American football player, when you say to him, Hey, what are you gonna do after your career’s over? You know, he’s not sitting there thinking about all these positive jobs because he doesn’t have that to draw upon him.
How about just a successful business and you don’t really see it a lot? I really think that we need help in our [00:10:00] thinking. The other thing is, as athletes, someone’s telling us, Everything, how much to weigh if our hands are too big, if our feet are too big, if our stance is too bad, all these different things, how fast we need to be.
It’s not, we’re just showing up and playing and, live with the results. Someone is saying, no, you gotta get faster, you gotta be this fast, you gotta be that. Well, when you get out of football, there’s no one there helping you. You’re on your own and when you’re in school, there’s no one there trying to prepare you for life.
If you don’t make it to the pros, you’re gonna leave that up to society. Would you, will, is someone gonna hire you? You know, who knows if you’re gonna get hired or not? I’d like to think that things are getting better and people are starting to understand. This Black Lives Matter movement. I’m really happy to see it.
I’ve gone out and protested myself. It was really amazing to see so many diverse group of people out there interested in the movement. But even that, I still know that there’s holes in their thinking. I’m glad that everybody is willing to [00:11:00] get out there and march for the right type of thing.
I am proud to be an American and the reason I’m proud is because of moments like that when I get out and protest and see that I’m not alone and there’s people that don’t look like me, that feel the same way, that things could be better and should be better.
AJ: And that you have the right to you have the right to influence public opinion and votes, no question, what would you do if you could wave a magic wand? So speaking of your alma mater, the Herm Edwards head coach, African American Ray Anderson, athletic director, African American man. Certainly they have some sign of that environment, but that is not what we see when we look around collegiate athletics, and I again won’t share the numbers with you, but they’re pretty disappointing relative to those who play the game and relative to even just reflecting the country we live in.
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you do at those levels, whether it be collegiate or in the nfl to move the needle?
Mike Haynes: One of the things I would do is I would have a [00:12:00] historically black college in California. Instead of all of them seem to be in the south. I’d have one in California where the thinking is a little different.
The school wouldn’t be a hundred percent black, it’d just be historically black. There’d be a lot of black kids there. A lot of the black athletes would go to school there. And then I think that for athletes to go to other schools that are not want is not that school, those athletes would be able to ask for different things, like different types of classes or different lessons.
As you probably know, back when they integrated the schools. If you were a black teacher, you lost your teaching credential. You couldn’t teach anymore. All the teachers were white. And so as a black kid growing up, I didn’t have one single solitary black teacher until I got to Arizona State. And that was the only teacher that looked like me in my entire life.
And the class he took was African American history, and another one was African [00:13:00] American literature. Those are my two black teachers where everybody else of the teachers look just like them. And then the people that look like me, they’re the janitor, the mailman, things like that.
They’re not business owners. They couldn’t get loans. And now people who are giving loans to African-American folks, I feel like this must be some kind of a ripoff. That’s why they’re being so nice. That’s the way my mind thinks a little bit now, and that’s, I don’t like that, I don’t like thinking that way.
I’m a Christian Guy. I love everybody. I want to feel like everybody loves me and I can trust them. They can trust me, that kind of thing. But it’s not reality. It’s difficult sometimes.
AJ: I’m amazed that you had never until Assu had an African American professor. You didn’t you go to a city school in la, John Marshall.
Mike Haynes: Yeah, but I didn’t live in the hood. I didn’t live I didn’t live in South Central LA. I had a lot of relatives that did, but we lived in this area called [00:14:00] Silver Lake back when I was a kid. I thought it was Hollywood. We always called it Hollywood. But they moved the sign a couple of miles to the west and they call this area Silver Lake.
It’s a nice area, but it was super diverse. Out of like 2200 kids maybe in my high school. Were probably only 50 black kids. That’s guys and girls. 50 kids, huge population of Asian and Hispanic. And Armenian it was super diverse and we didn’t have any problems at all in the school, but it would’ve been nice if I could have had some teachers that looked like me along the way, especially in teaching me math and English and classes like that cuz I didn’t have very high goals then I didn’t even think I was ever gonna go to college.
AJ: The country is increasingly living in less diverse environments than we did in prior generations. Believe it or not, even though we’re becoming more diverse as a country, so many people. Having the benefit of what you did in growing up in a diverse environment. They’re not from that [00:15:00] world. They are encountering with perceptions and biases because they don’t have a great deal of interaction with people of a different color or ethnic background.
But if you can blow my mind with some stories of growing up in Silver Lake in la, I’d like to hear it.
Mike Haynes: We used to play football in the street. Because we didn’t live very close to a park. It was a very residential area. And when I say the street that I hope you’re not thinking, it’s like a busy street.
It’s a residential area. Hardly any cars would come down the street. And I was in this area called Temple. Which is closer to downtown la, which is a little bit busier than my street where I grew up on in Silver Lake, but it was close to a police department called Rampart. Rampart, the police department.
That police department has had so many incidents and it became famous for having all these incidents in the LA area. We’re playing and a police car drives by one police car drives by super, super [00:16:00] slow. And we’re like, oh my gosh, come on already. And soon as they got past us, one of the guys flipped the bird to the cop.
You know, like, you know pigs, saying, talking like that. And we went back to playing football and maybe 15 minutes later. We look up the street and we see two police cars, coming down the street on both sides of the road, taking up both sides of the street, coming right towards us, and we’re going like, Hey man, there must be something going on down there.
What’s going on? And so we are looking, and then we look the other way and there’s two more cars coming this way. And so the guys are going, they’re coming for us. And so I said, guys, whatever you do, do not run. Don’t run. That’s what they want us to do. Don’t run. So we don’t run. And then the cars speed up and they come up close to us cuz they know now that we’ve seen ’em.
And then they say, Hey, who’s the guy that flipped us off? Who is the brave guy? That flipped us [00:17:00] off. And we took a little break at work and came back, wanted to show you guys how tough we are, and that stuff. And then we realized more cars had come up the alley. So if we had. If we had run, we would’ve run towards the police cars that were in the alleys, and we would’ve been in trouble in the alley, especially so today.
Who knows? They weren’t shooting at kids in those days, so I don’t think anybody would’ve shot us. But they would’ve scared the heck out of us and, made us run like crazy and probably could have been injured just by hopping fences and getting your shirt caught on something and falling and, hurting yourself.
But it was horrible. These guys would just, do those kinds of things to us as kids, and it’s just only the African American kids that, that was the horrible part. And they would take us down, took me down the police station one time and just put me, I didn’t have a handcuffs on or anything.
I’m probably like 14 years old and I sit there for probably an hour and then they come in and say, okay, you can go. I’m go can you at least take me [00:18:00] back where you pick me up? I said no. So I had to leave and I got home late for dinner and had to tell my mom where I was to talk about embarrassing.
It was horrible. And she didn’t believe my story because, that doesn’t sound believable. But anyway, there’s a lot of stories like that and there’s still going on. And the thing that I love about today with the technology and things, so you can capture these things on your phone and they’re, the police officers are required to wear these cameras.
And I’m hoping that’ll make a difference. In the behavior, but I really think that the behavior has to come from the people in the community. If the people in the community say, we don’t want that kind of behavior from our police officers in our community, these are our kids, and these kids come to my school here and my kids play with their kid, with those kids, if everybody gets on the same page, maybe their results will start to change.
And I’m hoping that I’m optimistic right now that that could happen.
AJ: You are often spreading awareness on the impact of concussions in cte, and you’ve even pledged to donate your [00:19:00] brain to concussion research. Tell us about the process behind that decision and your involvement.
Mike Haynes: I didn’t know an awful lot about concussions until 20 years ago, really.
When I was a player, I didn’t know much about him. I had never had one until I started asu. My first concussion was in the Fiesta Bowl against University of Missouri. And I just lost total cogni cognition. I couldn’t tell you my name. I couldn’t tell you who we were playing. I could look right across the field and see ’em, but I didn’t know who they were,
and that was scary. That was really scary. And so I actually thought that I was gonna be like that for the rest of my life. I didn’t know that my cognition was gonna come back, but at halftime my cognition came back and I walked over to the coach and said, Hey, coach, I’m back. And he said, oh good Hayes.
And said, great. And fortunately for me, one of the seniors, a guy named Wayne Bradley, Came over and said, Mike, you don’t wanna go back man, let me do it. This is my last game as a sundevil. You’re gonna be here three more years. Let me finish the game. I said let me go ask the [00:20:00] coach.
And the coach said, yeah, no problem, cuz we were beating Missouri. What I learned later about concussions, Is the concussion itself is not a good thing, but the worst thing is getting another concussion while you’re concussed. And the most important thing to do for a player is to know that he’s concussed and tell the coaches or the trainers.
So they can pull him or he’s gotta come outta the game. Playing with a concussion, you’re just taking unnecessary risk. It’s like crazy to do that, but I don’t think guys did, they didn’t know that it was crazy to do it. They do. They were doing it all the time. But me, whenever I had a concussion that time, I couldn’t tell you anything.
I was, my memory was horrible. I couldn’t tell you anything. And then the next time it affected my vision. And I couldn’t see very well, and so I’d run and I didn’t even see that my body was. Falling over. I couldn’t even tell, my perception was just totally wrong, and [00:21:00] so I couldn’t play. Another time I did play with the concussion because I never knew I was concussed.
So I, we were playing a, I think it was against the Jets, but it, I’m not sure who it was really. And I hit a tight end and I knocked myself out and I didn’t know that I knocked myself out. And so after the game, my wife said to me, Why did you lay down on the ground so long after you hit that guy?
I said, what are you talking about? Since when you hit the tight end, I’m going, I never hit the tight end, so I had not remembered that play at all. Then the next day when we’re looking at game film, I saw the play and I was livid when I saw the play and I said to my teammates, Hey, why didn’t you guys get me off the field?
They said, because you looked like you were fine when you finally got up. I’m going, wow, this is crazy. Looking back, I was really lucky. So that game I continued to play. And everything worked out. But when I had kids and I realized that, that they wanted to [00:22:00] play football that got me into coaching.
And so I coached them to make sure that the coaches were going to be treating the kids right and they weren’t. And I had to step in. I actually worked at the N F L office at the time. I went in to see what we recommended and how did we teach tackling and things like that. And I’ve been an advocate for change the whole time.
I j I joined that group in bc. I’m one of their advisors, down here with my kids. I go to their school. I don’t miss. Opportunities to talk to their coaches about it. And I still have a hard time with a lot of the hits when guys are getting hit to the head. So in the N F L and college, I think they’re doing a much, much better job of getting those guys out of the game.
When, if they’re gonna try to do that in the game, in the N F L, when you get booted outta the game, that’s a game check and that’s a lot of money. For these guys, if you can’t control that, you will be gone. If we lose a game because you hit some guy and you, they threw you outta the game.
It’s, that’s horrible. [00:23:00] That’s a horrible thing to go through. So I think they’re doing an awful lot and the pros and in college to make the game safer. The number, the way they practice, the amount of practice and the time hours that they can practice is different. I like that.
But youth football, There’s really nobody there, policing youth football in the same way and a kid can hit a kid in the head and knock the kid out, and that kid who hit him in the head doesn’t even leave the field. So there’s still some things that need to be worked out, but I do know that there is a strong effort to do that.
And because my kids are now older, my youngest kid is 16 in high school, no, no longer playing youth football. I have stopped following youth football because he’s no longer there. I don’t know what changes have happened, but in, in high school, I watch him practice. I talk to the coaches. I have a great relationship with the coaches.
And I think it’s really important for all parents to have great relationship with their kids coaches, to make sure that they trust them, that the coaches [00:24:00] know that parents are concerned about that about concussions, wanna make sure that the coaches will do the right thing and that their kids’ brain is way more important than any football game.
AJ: So after retiring from football, you also had a long and successful career on the business side of sports. As an executive at Callaway Golf and the N F L headquarters at the N F L, you helped players transition into and out of the N F L and also served as a special advisor to the commissioner where you consulted on player issues.
I’m guessing you have some great stories from that time. Anything you’re willing to share?
Mike Haynes: Probably I think that people would really want to know if the NFL really cares about these players and they do. That was very good for me to know. And a lot of times when it appears that they don’t is, they don’t have enough knowledge or enough information.
But both commissioner tag. And [00:25:00] also commissioner Goodell, they have meetings all the time with these different organizations. Sometimes, doctors, you know about all of these things and they have people in charge that are doing their research and doing all the analytics to try and make a difference.
They have a lot of former players and coaches. Working at the N F L, when I first got the job there in 1994, I believe it was. I think there were three former players out of a couple hundred that played the game. That’s crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. And that bothered me. And I, I said that we need to be more diverse in our staff.
More people that played the game or been around the game their whole life. They probably can come up with some pretty good things to do to deal with some of these issues. And I realized that the game and the sport was really run by people that really didn’t play. Now that’s changing. I don’t know why that is, but it’s changing, but I’m glad it’s changing because you have different [00:26:00] thoughts about what’s happening.
AJ: Yeah, no question. To have the experience and perspective of what it’s like to be on the field and what it takes to prepare and perform. No doubt. No doubt. You’re a cancer survivor, having beat prostate cancer, and I know you do a great deal to contribute and fight and drive awareness. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your work against prostate cancer?
Mike Haynes: Well, I used to be the spokesperson for the American Neurological Association. I was at, quite a number of years, more than 10 years. I realized through my own life, my own experiences that most men are unaware of this particular disease, and it runs in families. But most men or most people don’t really know what problems are in their family.
They never even seek it out. Prostate cancer is a cancer that if you detect it in its early stages, you can treat it successfully. That’s what got me going because there was a high percentage of African American men getting prostate cancer and they were finding out in the later [00:27:00] stages because they weren’t going to the doctor every year.
Taking a, an annual physical, nowadays you can, if you’re a football player, you can actually go to a lot of different. Places and get a physical a lot of times in the off season they’ll do a charity golf event and they’ll have something set up so those players can go find out, they go through a full assessment for not only prostate cancer, but for other things too, like high blood pressure and diabetes and things like that.
My life has been all about service to others, and that’s what I really want to be doing with my life. I want to be trying to make a a positive difference in the world, in helping men and women make better decisions. And so for me, when I was diagnosed and talking to doctors, I was really worried.
I was scared to death that I was gonna die. And when, even though they told me that, I found out in the early stages, I didn’t trust the doctors. I didn’t trust them. I just think they’re just being nice. But as soon as I realized that they were telling the truth, then I said, we gotta do something about [00:28:00] this because, I found out by luck, I had already had an annual physical at the Hall of Fame where they were doing this, these testing for this.
I went into a room to talk to some of the players and to see how it was going. Someone that was working in there said, Hey, why don’t you do it? Maybe you can encourage some of these other guys to sit down and have their blood drawn. So I said, okay. I found out that I had cancer in nine of the 12 places that they checked.
Wow. Yeah. As much as it’s a high number, because we caught it early, I was in good shape. I think men who had prostate cancer, they didn’t want anybody to know, but today, it’s different. It’s, they’re doing a much better job, but, Prior to that, I don’t think they were doing a great job and men just did not wanna talk about it.
Men need to be kinda like women where it comes to their breast cancer, they’re they tell the world, men are, I don’t know what’s wrong with us, but we’re getting better.
AJ: Well, it’s good of you to get the word out given that hurdle, moments [00:29:00] like this and the work that you’ve done to drive that awareness.
So gentlemen, get checked out.
Mike Haynes: Thank you. Thank you for saying that. I have a super passion about living a long time. My experience with the prostate cancer is what led me to saying I’m gonna have a goal. I wanna live to be 125 in sports. With goals we learn, I. Start with the end in mind and then work backwards to try and figure out how to get there.
That’s where it all started with me. It started with the cancer. I realized that at that point I had never, ever thought about how long I wanted to live. I just thought I would live till I was like 60, 65. I’ve already exceeded that, having a goal of wanting to live to be 1 25. You start paying attention and maybe if that was my goal when I was in high school and in college, I would’ve known more about science, like biology and physiology and all these different things.
They would’ve been way more interesting, I was just taking those classes because they were required, not because I really had an interest, it was gonna help me somehow. But when you [00:30:00] have a goal, I think it changes your interest level. I really, I wonder how people can get A’s and things like in classes like that when they don’t really have an interest in them.
Let, maybe their interest is in getting a college. I don’t know.
AJ: There’s some interesting insights on that, but I do think following your passion is right, but there’s balance too, right? That’s the, yeah. Questionnaire, educational system faces right now. Tell me, are there some life hacks you’re willing to share with all the listeners on what you are going to do?
To give yourself the best chance to live to 125.
Mike Haynes: One thing that I’m doing now is I’m looking at, I’m gonna call it an al alternative type medicines, natural medicines. So like C B D, I’m actually a co-founder of a C B D company called Preferred Hyphen, C B D. One of the other co-founders is another former football player, a guy named Glenn Cadres, who, went to school at University of Houston.
He played for the Broncos and the Chiefs. And the other guy, another guy is another [00:31:00] former professional athlete named Jim O’Leary. And Jim went to Arizona State. We’re in the CBD business and so we want to help people. It’s really working for me. I can’t even tell you. I really feel like I have a great chance of making it to 1 25 to make it to 1 25.
You have to have a very active lifestyle. If you just sit around and read and watch TV and walk your dog and stuff, then you’re gonna do what most of the people have been doing for a long time that haven’t lived to be 1 25. You’re gonna have to be a lot more active and come up with different things to do faster walks, bike rides, runs the C B D allows me to have these harder workouts.
I’ve, I still work out with my kids too. My, once playing football in Boston College and one’s in high school, running track and playing football. So the CBD is helping me. My diet, my wife is 13 years younger, so that also helps. She wants to stay in shape and look great, so that’s nice.
[00:32:00] My wife wants me to be in the sports business. She thinks I should be coaching kids. I say I got plenty of time for that. I can do this. Yeah, you got 60 years. I got a lot of time, so I’m thinking about doing something as well with coaching, coaching football as I know football track, and I know a little bit about track and technique and things like that.
It’s probably the thing I enjoy the most is mindset. Getting people in the right mindset, helping them set the right kind of goals. So my efforts was, were always in sports, and then later I realized I, I should have been more diverse in my goals. I should have had a goal for, my social life, for my health and wellness.
So I should have had all these different goals. This is how naive I was, aj. I said the person who spends his last dollar as he takes his last breath, That’s doing it right? All right. And and I really honest to God believe that. [00:33:00] And then later, as I’ve gotten older I realized, it would’ve been better if I had been thinking, make a lot of money and leave it to my kids and my grandkids and family members like that.
So that they don’t have to play football to have a great life. They don’t have to play any sport. They can really get into science and law and government and do different things like that. They don’t have to be a great athlete. Fortunately, I’m gonna live a lot longer and I’ll be able to make up for someone that lost time, but having multiple goals in all these different areas.
You gotta start with the end in mind, like where you wanna be. And and then work backwards from there.
AJ: I love that and I agree with that. And thank you for sharing that. You really are an extraordinary man. It’s kind of unbelievable to think about the forks in the road in life where you’re sitting there in LA in a gap year, an involuntary gap year where yeah, knows where your life’s gonna go.
And the next thing you know, college football, the nfl, you’ve [00:34:00] had this hall of Fame career on and off the field. And I’m very proud of you for the things that you’ve done driving awareness for prostate cancer, a cancer survivor yourself, donating your brain for concussion research. These are extraordinary things.
It is really, truly a pleasure to have you share so much of your life with myself and also the people that will get to hear this. So Mike, thank you very much for being with us here today. Both.
Mike Haynes: Thanks for having me, aj, and best of luck to you man.
AJ: If you’d like to join the conversation, email us@infonvgt.com or check out our website@nvgt.com. I’m AJ Maestes. Join us again next week for Navigating Sports Business.[00:35:00]